Colonies and hinterlands under the lens of medicine: encounters and mismatches between Brazil and Portugal on the path of human trypanosomiasis, 1901-1924

Author(s)

Ewerton Luiz Figueiredo Moura da Silva

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Medicina (FM/SBD)
• Defense date: 2021-11-23

Examining board members

André Mota; Jose Ricardo de Carvalho Mesquita Ayres; Philip Jan Havik; Simone Petraglia Kropf

• Advisor: André Mota; Isabel Maria da Silva Pereira Amaral

Abstract

This study analyzes the medical-scientific contact between Brazil and Portugal, from 1901 to 1924, having as a guiding principle the contributions of Brazilians and Portuguese to the production of knowledge about human trypanosomiasis sleeping sickness and Chagas disease. The first gained visibility in the Portuguese scientific agenda due to its incidence in the African colonies of Angola and the island of Principe; and the second meant an important Brazilian scientific discovery, carried out in the state of Minas Gerais. The temporal markers are justified because, in 1901, the Portuguese sent the first European scientific mission to study, in Africa, the etiology of sleeping sickness and, in 1924, internationally famous Carlos Chagas traveled to Europe in order to represent Brazil at the League of Nations Health Organization, when he was invited by Portuguese colleagues to lecture about Chagas disease in Lisbon. By consulting a diverse set of documents consisting of minutes of medical associations, inaugural medical theses, publications in scientific journals, journalistic articles, correspondence, institutional reports and health bulletins available in historical archives and public libraries in Brazil and Portugal, an attempt was made to understand the repercussions of Carlos Chagas scientific discovey in Portugal and the resonances, in Brazil, of European research on sleeping sickness, with an emphasis on Portuguese contributions, thus identifying the circulation of knowledge, from the perspective of appropriation by the receiving communities, between the two countries. At the same time, we invested in a comparative analysis between the practive of medicine by the Portuguese in African colonies to combat sleeping sickness and the role assumed by Brazilian doctors in rural and interior areas of Brazil in search of transmitting insects and cases of the disease. Finally, this doctoral thesis contextualizes the history of Portuguese-Brazilian medica-scientific relations by addressing the negotiations for a medical congress that promised to bring together professionals from both sides of the Atlantic (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 17/18101-9 - Tropical Medicine in Portuguese: the role of human Trypanosomiasis for Portuguese-Brazilian medical-scientific relations (1901-1923)
• Grantee: Ewerton Luiz Figueiredo Moura da Silva
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate